CHIP DESIGNER Nvidia has launched the Geforce GTX 760 as a replacement for its popular Geforce GTX 660.

Nvidia's Geforce GTX 760 is the high volume graphics card in the firm's latest crop of cards rebranded as the Geforce GTX 700 series. The firm's specifications sheet for the Geforce GTX 760 had been widely leaked and it is, as expected, largely a rebranding of the Geforce GTX 660 with some minor changes.

Nvidia's Geforce GTX 760 has 1,152 cores, with most board vendors opting for 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Gigabyte's GTX 760 will run the GPU at 1085MHz, which will be boosted to 1,150MHz. The firm has clocked the 2GB of GDDR5 memory at 6GHz with the memory connected to the GPU via a 256-bit bus.

Nvidia was originally scheduled to launch the Geforce GTX 760 last week but delayed the release without an explanation to its card vendors, though it is most likely due to the firm's announcement that it will license its Kepler architecture to third parties. The firm is hoping that with AMD keeping its powder dry on retail Radeon HD 8000 series cards, it could get away with a week's delay in launching, especially when it has chosen a very agressive pricing strategy.

Nvidia touted improved performance in games such as Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts as a response to AMD's aggressive partnering and bundling of games with its graphics cards. The problem for Nvidia is that while it certainly can compete with AMD's graphics cards on the present crop of games, there is a question about its ability to compete with AMD at similar price points in the future as game developers heavily optimise titles for AMD's GPU architecture that will power both the Xbox One and Playstation 4 (PS4).

Nvidia's graphics card partners have priced the Geforce GTX 760 from £200 upwards, which is just £20 shy of a few Radeon HD 7950 boards. µ